Chapter 2

When I woke, the room was nothing but white walls.

Two restraints had been fastened around my wrists, and my ankles were tied down too.

The moment I moved even a little, the sensor by the bed started to beep.

A nurse came in to check my pupils.

"You're awake?"

I forced myself upright, dragging my body up off the bed.

"I want to see my daughter."

The nurse shook her head. "Family says you can't see her for now."

"Then I want to see Neil."

She didn't answer. She only set a new chart down at the foot of the bed.

I looked down at it.

It read: Patient claims to be persecuted by her husband, refuses treatment, exhibits severe persecutory delusions.

I let out a cold laugh.

Just then, I heard my daughter crying outside the door.

I shot upright, desperate to see her.

"Ninny! It's Mommy!"

The door opened a crack.

My daughter stood outside, Neil and my mother-in-law behind her.

I looked at her, my voice trembling.

"Ninny, come here to Mommy."

She didn't move.

Neil bent down and murmured something in her ear.

She lifted her head and looked at me, timid.

"Mommy, why did you try to hurt me?"

Something clenched hard around my heart.

"I didn't. You pushed me down first. I only wanted to catch hold of you."

She shook her head and shrank behind Neil.

"Daddy says you'll get me killed."

I looked at Neil.

"You taught her to say that?"

Neil put on a sorrowful expression.

"Vee, how could you slander me right in front of our child?"

"She saw you pick up the knife with her own eyes. Are you really going to force her to lie for you?"

My mother-in-law chimed in from the side.

"That's exactly what mental illness is. Never admitting a thing you've done."

Neil stroked our daughter's hair.

"Don't be scared. Daddy will protect you."

Her eyes filled with a fragile, wounded look, and she asked in a small voice.

"When can Mommy leave this place?"

Neil was silent for a moment.

When the nurse came over to change my dressing, her fingers brushed the corner of the chart, and she suddenly stopped.

"Mrs. Dickerson, have you ever had a serious mental illness before?"

"No."

"But it says here you were diagnosed seven years ago."

I looked at the chart, my expression wary.

That was wrong.

Seven years ago was the year my mother died. It was also the year the hospital's ownership changed hands.

"Who wrote this?"

The nurse was about to answer when footsteps sounded outside the door.

Neil pushed it open. "What did she say to you?"

The nurse immediately lowered her head.

"Nothing."

Neil walked over and pulled the chart out of her hands.

"You can't take anything a patient says seriously."

The nurse glanced at me and said nothing more.

Neil set another document down in front of me.

"The family company's been having cash-flow trouble lately. We owe a lot of money out there."

"And now you're in the hospital. Someone has to handle the assets under your name."

I opened the document.

It wasn't a temporary management authorization. It was a share-transfer agreement.

All Neil wanted was to use my time locked away to take every asset in my name that he could get his hands on.

I looked up at him.

"I thought this was temporary management?"

"What's the difference between managing it and transferring it?"

"It all belongs to the family in the end anyway."

He finally dropped the act, jabbing a finger at the agreement.

"I'm the one who's kept this family and this company afloat all these years. Hand the assets to me and at least the business keeps running. Leave them in your hands and you'll only destroy them!"

Understanding hit me all at once.

The husband-and-wife bond he kept talking about was nothing more than the last scrap of cover before the robbery.